Tuesday 30 November 2010

OOPA: Fox debate rages on in Tasmania


More than a decade after the reported introduction of foxes to Tasmania many people believe that foxes are established, yet others believe that a breeding population does not exist and never has. The elephant in the living room is that a number of things don’t seem to add up and the living room floor is about to collapse if we ignore these things for much longer.

Biologist Dr Clive Marks questions the science being relied upon, and argues for an independent scientific review of the entire application of the scat-DNA technique to confirm once and for all the validity of OOPA foxes in Tasmania.

Elsewhere on the same site, biologist Nick Mooney addresses many of the issues Dr Marks raises, and confirms $20 million has so far been spent trying to discover if foxes really are in Tasmania - and cautions sceptics not to 'throw the baby out with the bath water' when contemplating the existence of Vulpes vulpes in the island state. 

Overseas readers may wonder what the big deal is...the fox is obviously not native to Australia and, until relatively recently, the island state of Tasmanian was considered fox free. So is it or isn't it? That is the question...

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